“IT HAS LONG BEEN MY CUSTOM TO TRUST NO ONE’S ACCOUNT OF another’s words, and it has served me well,” Dornvald said to Thirg, who was riding alongside him. “Whether any Lifemaker speaks to priests and hearers, I know not—that is His affair and theirs. But it seems to me that any services of mine that He would lay claim upon, He would be able enough to make known to me Himself.” The party was moving just below the skyline along a ridge that would bring them to a high pass through the mountains. The main column had doubled up on the barren, open terrain, and scouts were riding a short distance ahead and on the flanks. The forests of southern Kroaxia now lay far below and behind.
Thirg had been surprised and impressed. Although for most of the time Dornvald affected a simple and direct manner, his conversation revealed glimpses of an acuity of thinking and a perspicacity of observation that Thirg rarely encountered. The outlaw seemed to display intuitively the same disinclination to take anything for granted that Thirg had taught himself only after extensive labors. Did the outlaw way of life breed suspicion of appearances and assurances as a habit, Thirg wondered, or did outlaws become outlaws because they were doubters already? At any rate the discourse was providing a welcome distraction from the monotony of the ride.
“A proposition which I would not desire to contest,” Thirg agreed. “So does the possibility not suggest itself that Nature is no more obliged to contrive an explanation of Life that is simply comprehended by the minds of robeings than it is to construct the world in a shape that is simply perceived? Did Lifemaker indeed create robeing, therefore, or, more likely I am beginning to suspect, did robeing create Lifemaker as the more convenient alternative to widening his own powers of comprehension?”
“I have no answer to that,” Dornvald said. “But it seems to me that you are substituting a worse unknown for one that is mystery enough already. Round worlds and worlds beyond the sky are strange notions to contemplate, yet not beyond the bounds to which imagination could accommodate itself. But is not the riddle of Life of a different complexity? For is not all Life in the form of machines that were assembled by machines, which in turn were assembled by machines, and so for as far back as we care to permit our imaginations to postulate? But however far that be, must we not arrive inevitably at the bound which requires the first machine to have been assembled by that which was not a machine? Even if your round world of distances dispenses with need of any Barrier, this barrier more surely bounds the world of imagination. Or would you make a circle out of time itself?”
“Again I am unable to quarrel with your reasoning,” Thirg replied. “Nor with that of priests, for that matter, for this is their logic also. That that which was not machine assembled the first machine I would not argue, since were it machine, then that which it assembled could not have been the first machine by our own premise. Nor do I take exception to him who would name this nonmachine machine-assembler ‘Lifemaker,’ since it is as well described by such a name as by any other. But that the one conclusion should compel us also to construct of necessity a realm beyond reach of reason and unknowable to inquiry, I cannot accept. That is the barrier which I would dispute.”
The column closed up again to pick its way in single file along a narrow track crossing an icefall, with a steep drop below on one side and a sheer cliff extending upward to the crestline on the other. Beyond the icefall the ground became open again and resumed its rise; the riders took up open order once more, and Thirg moved alongside Dornvald.
“The question is no more answered than before, Questioner-of-Barriers,” Dornvald observed, evidently having turned the matter over in his mind. “For now we must ask what made the Lifemaker and the Maker of Lifemakers. It seems to me that you have merely moved your barrier to another place. It stands as high as ever, but now you must travel farther to cross it. The gain would appear poor compensation for the exertion, for what does it amount to but tired feet?”
“If the barrier has been moved back, then the world of knowledge that it encompasses is so much the greater,” Thirg replied. “And if that world does not close back upon itself but extends indefinitely, then the gain can be without limit even though the barrier is never crossed. Therefore does this barrier in the mind have any more effective substance to it than the Barrier which is supposed to enclose the physical world?”
Dornvald considered the proposition for a while. “But what is there in the knowable universe, apart from machines, that could assemble machines?” he asked at last.
“Nothing of which I am aware...in this world,” Thirg replied. “But if there should indeed exist other worlds beyond the sky, and if they are knowable, then are we not obliged to include them in the total knowable universe of which you speak? And does not the removal of a barrier to distances so vast leave room enough within to harbor an unknown but knowable Life which, though not machine, might create machine?”
“Now your words become the riddle,” Dornvald said. “How could Life exist without machine when both are one?”
“Is Life constrained to take no other form than that familiar to us?” Thirg asked. “If so, by what law? Certainly none that presents itself to me with credentials sufficient to place its authority above all question.”
“Well, now you must answer your own riddle,” Dornvald said. “For truly we have arrived at my barrier now, and its faces are unscalable. What form is both Life and not Life, for it is not machine, yet machine is Life?”
“I can conceive of none such, Returner-of-Riddles,” Thirg answered. “But then I have never claimed that the borders which bound the tiny country of my comprehension, and the barrier which confines the universe of the knowable must coincide. The greater territory contains vast regions outside the smaller, with room enough to accommodate whole nations of answers both to this riddle and others that I know not even how to ask.”
They fell silent, and thoughtful patterns came and went slowly across Dornvald’s face for a while. At last he looked sideways at Thirg and said, “Perhaps your thoughts are not so strange after all, Wonderer-about-Lifemakers. There have been tales of flying beasts that descended from the sky.”
“I have heard them,” Thirg replied. Allegedly a mysterious creature had come down from the sky in a remote area of northern Kroaxia about twelve twelve-brights previously and been devoured by swamp-dwelling saber cutters. Rumors told of similar events in more distant places at about the same time too, but always it was a case of somebody who knew somebody who had actually seen them. “But all through the ages there have been myths of wondrous things. One myth among many will not be made any the less a myth by mere conjecturings of mine that would have it be otherwise.”
“If it is a myth,” Dornvald said.
“I cannot show that it is,” Thirg replied. “And neither can I show conclusively that the fairy beings with which children would inhabit the forests are a myth, for both propositions rest equally on negatives. But the impossibility of proving falsity is no more grounds for asserting the truth of one than of the other. Just as no Lifemaker speaks to you, so no flying beast has made itself visible to me. And neither do I know of witnesses whose testimony forces me to discount all possibility of other explanations for their claims.”
Another silence ensued. Then Dornvald said, “I have seen one.”
Thirg forced a tone that was neither too credulous nor openly disbelieving. “You saw a creature flying? It actually descended from the sky?”
“So I was assured by one who was there before me,” Dornvald replied. “But I did see its remains, and it was the likes of no beast that I have ever seen before in all my travels far and wide across this world. That I can vouch.”
Thirg sighed. Always it was the same. He had seen that much himself—a partially dismantled subassembly that his naturalist friend had shown him many twelve-brights before, taken, it was said, from such remains as Dornvald had mentioned. It had been unlike anything that Thirg had ever seen from the innards of any familiar kind of animal, with tissues of crude, coarse construction, and components clumsy and ungainly. A strange sample of workmanship for a Lifemaker to have sent down from the sky as proof of His existence, Thirg had commented. And of course, the naturalist hadn’t actually seen the descent with his own eyes...but the traveler that he had obtained the trophy from had bought it from a hunter who had been present. Thirg had never known what to make of the whole business. He still didn’t.
By late-bright, weary and hungry, the party had crossed through the pass and descended into the valley on the far side, which after a long trek through barren, hilly terrain brought them to Xerxeon, the last inhabited place before entering the Wilderness. It was a small farming settlement of crude dwellings fabricated from titanium and steel crop-pings, centered upon a few rudimentary servicing machines and generators which supported a few score families and their animals. The scrubland around the village had been cleared to make room for a few meager fields of domesticated parts and body-fluid manufacturing facilities which the peasants toiled long hours to keep supplied with materials and components.
Dornvald, whom the villagers evidently knew from previous visits, paid for provisions with a “tax refund,” and as dark came over the sky the outlaws commenced taking rest and refurbishment in turns while the others stayed awake to keep watch. After seeing to his steed and Rex at a feed shop nearby, Thirg was almost dropping by the time his turn came to lie down in a robeing-service bay and plug himself into the socket that would deactivate his circuits and send him for a while into blissful oblivion. He awoke refreshed and recharged, with new bearing liners, filters, electrical contacts, and fluids; fresh plating gleamed on his abraded surfaces. With feelings of well-being, Thirg was ready to face the new bright that lay ahead. There would be no rest on the next dark, for apart from infrequent top-ups taken from the wild-grown hydride cells which they would carry with them, the riders would not find food again until they reached the far side of the Wilderness.
Before Thirg was even fully awake, Geynor rushed in from the street. “Good, you’re up. We have to get out fast. Come on!”
“What? Are the soldiers here?”
“No time to explain.”
Thirg followed Geynor outside and found the whole village in panic. Most of the doors and windows were heavily barred. A few fearful faces peered out here and there; in the central square between the houses, the village Headrobeing and a group of elders were haranguing Dornvald and his outlaws, who were loading up their mounts and obviously preparing to move out in a hurry. On the far side of the square more robeings were down on their knees chanting hymns. Groork stood in front of them, his arms spread wide in supplication, gazing up at the sky. Everything was bathed in a radiance of ghostly violet that seemed to be coming from overhead.
Thirg had taken three paces across the square when he stopped dead, his head tilted back and his body frozen into immobility with disbelief. A smooth, slender, elongated creature, with rigid, tapering limbs and plumes of light streaming from its underside, was hovering motionless in the sky to the east, as if watching the village. There was no way to judge its size or distance with any certainty, but Thirg’s immediate impression was that it couldn’t be all that far away. He stood, and he gaped.
“The Lifemaker has sent His angel of wrath down upon us!” the village Headrobeing moaned, wringing his hands. “Begone from our midst, Dornvald, Bringer-of-Woes and Dealer-with-the-Accursed. See what retribution awaits even now us who accepted your treacherous bribes.”
“Take your followers from this place,” another cried. “Truly you are but living dead, risen from the dismantling tombs.”
“I shall carry no fear of His wrath within me,
Nor shall I tremble at His coming,
Nor harbor terrors of the beasts of darkness,
For my feet have trod the path of righteousness.
I have not strayed...” Groork’s voice recited from across the square.
“Mount up!” One of the outlaws reined to a halt with Thirg’s steed held stamping and snorting alongside his own.
Thirg shook himself from his trance and mounted hurriedly. “But what of Groork?” he called to Dornvald, who was turning to join the rest of the band as they grouped in the square.
“He hears only his voices and speaks only to the sky-dragon,” Dornvald shouted back. “We must leave.”
Then a body of villagers brandishing staffs and blades advanced round the corner ahead, following a huge, grim-faced robeing who was carrying a club of lead-weighted pipe. “You shall not escape, Accursed Ones!” the leader shouted. “The angel calls for a sacrifice in atonement. Let it take you who brought it here, not us!”
“Ride!” Dornvald drew his sword and urged his mount into a gallop, and the others closed in solidly behind with weapons already unsheathed. Thirg had blurred impressions of bodies reeling back in confusion on both sides as the ground raced by below, of shouting coining from all around him for a moment and then falling away behind...and then the road out of the village was opening up ahead with the last houses slipping out of view. The riders remained at full gallop while they passed through the outlying fields and slowed their pace only when they had emerged into the wild scrubland beyond.
When they looked back, they saw that the flying beast had moved from its station and was following them—nearer the ground than before, and off to one side. Then it moved forward rapidly to circle ahead of them, still keeping its distance and directing a cone of pale, violet light at the riders as if to study them from all angles. The column slowed to a cautious pace, and the dragon stayed ahead of them for a while. Finally it moved fully round to come behind them once again, then climbed higher once more and disappeared from sight moving back in the direction of the village. Time passed, and it failed to reappear. Gradually the fear that had gripped Thirg and his companions began to abate.
“What have you to say now about myths of sky-creatures, Seeker-of-Answers?” Dornvald asked Thirg when the latter looked as if he had recovered sufficiently to be capable of speech. “Have you an answer to offer for this?”
“I have none,” Thirg replied numbly. He thought back to Groork’s recent insistence that voices from the sky warned of the imminence of great events. Had he been mistaken about Groork’s voices all along? Thirg said little more as the bright lightened. Slowly the hills flanking the mouth of the last valley flattened out and receded away on either side, and the scene ahead opened out into vast wastes of dunes, scattered boulders, and undulating desert as far as the eye could see.